I would truly appreciate any help you all can give me on this. I have been working on creating a new print server for my company. It is running on Server 2008 64 bit. I've installed both 64 and 32 bit drivers and am getting ready to deploy to our Windows 7 clients. I have ran into one HUGE!!! problem. Minus our IT department, everyone is a non-admin.

About two weeks ago I began the great Google search to see how to allow this. We have decided that we want to use Group Policy to allow non-admin users to add printers. I found articles about which settings we need to change. I find one in User Configuration --> Administrative Templates --> Control Panel --> Printers --> Point and Print Restrictions. We disable it, push the group policy out to a non-admin user I created and it works like magic!!

I go to test it on a non-admin user on a new PC. Everything is going fine... until it asks me for the password!!! I do more research and I find out there is a very similar setting in Computer Configuration. I go in there and look in both Administrative Templates --> Printers and Administrative Templates --> Control Panel --> Printers. It's not in either place. Grrrrrr! I do more research and am getting 20 different answers. I get one person saying I can download something and import that policy, I have other saying don't use that setting us this. I think we have changed like 10 setting now for the OU we needs group policy and we can not get it to work.

We would be more than willing to try importing the setting. Our concern becomes if we import more administrative templates, will this remove any settings we have on ones that are still there?

"The solutions and answers provided on Experts Exchange have been extremely helpful to me over the last few years. I wear a lot of hats - Developer, Database Administrator, Help Desk, etc., so I know a lot of things but not a lot about one thing. Experts Exchange gives me answers from people who do know a lot about one thing, in a easy to use platform." -Todd S.

I opted for the Computer Policy and I pushed it to all of our desktops/servers. Using Windows 7 and Group Policy Preferences to push the printers, I've had good luck on all of our non-admin users. Below is what my settings look like along with my notes (I used to use a VBS login script to push the printers, which also worked fine).

I did not have to import any policy settings in order to make this work, I just edited the policy using a Windows 7 computer and the setting was there. We are NOT running in Windows 2008 AD mode so you shouldn't have an issue running in 2003 mode.

JamiBenson092279Author Commented: 2012-03-20

I appreciate the post BigRedRPB. Unfortunately we have about 45 printers. Some people stay at their desks, but many of our users have laptops and roam around the plant and building all day, printing to different printers, so a logon script doesn't work. We don't want 45 printers installed on each PC.

I probably made our setup sound kind of basic. We have around 200 printers. The login script was used to install printers for the user based on which computer they logged onto. This allowed our users who roam from office to office to have the local printers when they got to that office. You have a somewhat opposite setup, but still easy to setup as you could install printers by Site, IP, etc. Group Policy Preferences works pretty well.

Anyway, that's off topic. :) So, you're Group Policy doesn't look like this at all?

Very odd. I just looked up Point and Print restrcitions and found this on the MS site:

The Point and Print Restrictions setting can also be found under User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Printers. This policy is ignored by Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but is enforced by earlier editions of the operation system including versions Windows XP with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, and Windows Server 2008. We recommend that you change this policy setting in both locations so that all down-level clients have a consistent experience.

Given that only Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 can see the setting, is it possible that your Active Directory schema has not been extended to the 2008 R2 version? If not, that may be the issue. If it has, perhaps your server/desktop is still seeing the old version of the ADMX file. Take a look here to download the 2008 R2 versions - http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6243

Experts Exchange Solution brought to you by

Your issues matter to us.

Facing a tech roadblock? Get the help and guidance you need from experienced professionals who care. Ask your question anytime, anywhere, with no hassle.

I had saw that same post myself. I set it in User Configuration already.

I am pretty sure I read about downloading and installing the ADMX stuff before was well. My big concern with this was if I install it, will it overwrite any of the other policies I have in place? I'm not the network admin, just the person that is fixing the issue, so if I ask silly questions just bear with me. I have been a network admin recently for another company, just not here.

No prob Jami. Nope, you won't overwrite anything. The policy files are simply templates that expose registry settings. All of those registry settings are saved in a file in the policies folder but that file (and, actually, even the policy folder) is not touched when you import a new template. The template is actually copied to whatever machine you are running GPMC on (desktop or server) and only resides there. The only thing the template is used for is to expose the settings in the registry file. You're perfectly safe importing new templates.

JamiBenson092279Author Commented: 2012-03-20

Thank you, thank you, thank you LOL!!! I figured it was like that. I just hate to recommend something if I don't understand it fully. Last time I was an admin for a network, we used very basic settings and they made us install printers as admins so this never came up.

Thank you so much again! I will have our network guy give this a shot and see what happens. I can't thank you enough!

JamiBenson092279Author Commented: 2012-03-22

Sorry this took so long to get back to you. This would work for us, so I am totally giving you the points. We actually found a clever little work around. What we did is on a local computer we went into gpedit. We enabled the printer browsing policy. We logged off and back on. When we went back in, the point and print restrictions were there!!!

Our talked our network admin into turning on printer browsing on the domain controller. Low and behold, once we logged after we turned it on, Point and Print is there.

Problem solved..... now to fix the javascript on the printer installation page to automate....